Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Ocean City Interface: A Splintered Campaign Frame

NOT A DREAM PARK...

The RPG Blog Carnival for May Continues, with the theme “Campaigns
I’d Like to Run.” Great ideas keep rolling in. You can see links and notes
on those in the comments section of the original post. If you’d like to join in
the RPG Blog Carnival, write up a post on the topic. When you have it up, put a
link in the comments of that post (or this one) or send me an email. At the end
of the month I’ll do a comprehensive round up of them. You can see more on the RPG Blog Carnival here- if you have a theme idea, consider hosting a future
carnival. They're hunting for someone to host June!

Give me a heads up if you do a post so I can keep track for
the big list at the month’s end.

WELCOME TO CITY OF
OCEAN

One campaign I’ve been thinking about running more seriously
is both easier and tougher than most for me. On the one hand, it is a campaign
frame run by another GM in the group once and once by me. Those campaigns
generated awesome sessions. But at the same time, the premise itself creates
pitfalls and additional challenges. I’ve seen problems arise and derail whole
arcs of the campaign. I want to consider how I can lift the best elements while
reducing the worst.

That campaign’s gone by several names, but my version I’ve
always referred to as OCI or Ocean City Interface. The original form, crafted
by another GM, takes place in an anime inspired near-future. VR systems unite
the world and experts in their manipulation and design have great power and
influence. Each player makes up several levels to their character. On the one
hand, they have their Avatar, how they appear within the OCI. They craft an
identity and personality for that Avatar. But at another level they also have
their Alpha, essentially person in the real world. Players begin only knowing
one another’s Avatar. The Alpha characters may be spread out across the globe.
The Avatars interact in the Hub of the OCI, where they may have their own
virtual space and realms. But Portal offer the real challenge to the group.
These are adventure simulations within the Hub. Groups go into these to play-
in them they may meet other players (NPCs) but not know them except through
personality. It has several levels of interaction and play. Each Portal, of course,
can be a completely new and independent campaign using different systems. The
original version of OCI used this set up to create a world of future
conspiracy- with AI’s, hacking, lifts from anime as diverse as Bubblegum Crisis & Tenchi Miyo, and dark secrets related to
the family had helped to create the OCI. It reminds me most of Tad Williams’ Otherland, but remains distinct from
that. The GM who ran this used it to create a sprawling, complex, and tangled
narrative. He had eight players at one time and danced around between many
different systems. The players loved it when it ran well- and the GM did tons
of private emails with subplots. However when the players pushed to get at the
heart of the mysteries, the GM pulled back, refusing to pull the trigger on
anything and keeping revelations away from the players. Eventually the pressure
and the work got to him, and he shut down the game leaving things unresolved
after a couple of years of play. He tried to pick it up again with a smaller
group later, but once again burned out.

I didn’t play in that campaign, but I watched it secondhand
via the players I interacted with (including my wife). They really dug it and
everyone was disappointed when it shut down. There were various recriminations
and blame thrown around, but frankly the campaign looked unwieldy from the
outside.

Which, of course, prompted me to think about how you might
go about making it wieldy. It actually started because I wasn’t sure about how
compelling a Legend of the Five Rings
campaign would be. More than I wasn’t certain it was a good fit for the group I
had. I thought that perhaps I could get around that by making the L5R campaign
a portion of the campaign (an idea which would come back to bite me in the
ass). I would use something of the framework from the original campaign, but
with some changes. The biggest came in the opening, in which after several
sessions, I revealed that they were in a simulation, but one that no one in OCI
had actually created. That led to the big mystery: if that world wasn’t a
standard VR portal, then what was it? The campaign spanned several genres and
systems: Superhero, Fading Suns, The Dying Earth, Exalted, Wuxia, Grimm, Polaris, and a couple of others but with
a returning focus on L5R and the “real world.” In the end I pulled the curtain
back to reveal that this was in fact a Mage: The Ascension campaign, with the
OCI serving as a kind of refuge for Mages who had fled a disaster that had
swept across the world.

The campaign worked in parts, but in others it fell flat. I
loved many episodes of it, and so did the player. Perhaps the biggest problem arose
when I discovered that yes, my group could play an L5R campaign and enjoy it-
but that realization came after I’d already introduced the other elements…
Beyond that I stumbled over a few of the structural traps this set up offers.
We also had a problem player join the campaign late and had one of the best
players die.

So…troubles, you know?

COOL STUFF- what
makes this an appealing campaign?

Identity: Sherri suggested she found this one of the best
subtle elements in the campaign. It might seem a too meta, but playing characters
who play other characters offers interesting opportunities. In some ways, it
makes that contrast between internal and external explicit. Alphas may play portal
characters expressing desires or regrets about themselves. Players who like
those kinds of expressions and details find this a real pleasure.

Mystery: The structure of OCI offers a great larger campaign
mystery: the how and why of everything. In the original campaign, that tied to
a familial conspiracy and AIs; in the second, a war between supernatural
forces. The existence of a large-scale plot’s obvious at the outset, and
players recognize that they can investigate via the portals and NPC
interactions.

Multiplicity (Players): Players get to play different kinds of characters
and games, but there’s continuity. They can use that to more easily come up
with resonance and connections. The links between the different portals avoids
the sense that this is simply a throw-away character. At the same time, players
who like a particular genre less know that they’ll get to play in others they
love.

Multiplicity (GM): We have too many ideas and not enough time
to run all of them. This offers the opportunity to try out many different
settings. That has the add-on effect of making modules and campaign sourcebooks
more useful. Usually I don’t use these because they don’t necessarily fit with
the large-scale campaign I’ve built. Here they’re much easier to play with.

Contrasts: Different portals allows for interesting switches in
pacing, tone, and style. That can obviously happen in an ongoing campaign, but
this structure has that built in, making the GM’s job easier.

NPCs: Secondary characters in this campaign frame break into
three categories: standard NPCs, real world NPCs, and meta-NPCs. Real world
NPCs expand and play with a player’s Alpha existence- often separate from other
players. There’s a pleasure to having a set of “personal” NPCs. Meta-NPCs are
those who also play on the OCI and in the portals. This allows interesting
revelation of their personality, ambiguous objectives, and even uncertain
identity. Characters may not recognize one another in the portals. Then a
revelatory detail suggests that this NPC is actually X- which changes the
complexion of the story and interactions.

Nostalgia: An element only for our group. Many of the players
played in one or both of the previous OCI campaigns. One everyone loved but saw
cut down in its prime. The other was solid and had a full arc with a solid wrap
up.

OBSTACLES- what gets
in the way of the game?

Switches: Changing between campaign frames can feel awkward.
Need to have transitions to make events not whiplash around.

Stakes: If the portals are simply VR, then the stakes are
fairly low. Players need to feel like events at each level matter.

Player Buy In: Players may not care for some portals. If a
portal outstays its welcome, they may lose interest and investment in the game.
If they enjoy/know one genre only, then they’ll have a tough time switching.

Portal Love: If one portal gets a greater emphasis, then
players may resent having to go to others. In the first OCI, the fantasy portal
Shining Path occurred several times. The players invested in that heavily which
made the others feel pale and incidental. In my version, the players loved the
L5R portal.

Complexity: With multiple layers and characters, the campaign
story could become convoluted and hard to follow.

NPC Maintenance: Too many characters can be hard to keep
straight. Managing them when they appear across several portals and levels
offers even more of a challenge.

Rules: Both earlier versions used different games systems for
different portals. That means leaning new game systems constantly. It also
means building a new character completely for each portal.

Game Logic: If you think about it, the premise becomes
problematic. If I’m in a fantasy portal, does my character have knowledge of
modern tech? If the portal’s not VR then what goes on when I’m not present in
the portal?

Email: Both earlier versions of HCI used away from table email
as a major tool. Usually that revolved around real world events and interactions.
That potentially means much more work for the GM.

Dispersal: Real world set up has players from across the
globe. Getting them together is tough.

SOLUTIONS?

One Rule: I need to use one core system across all of the
levels. That means using a generic system or engine that scales well, has lots
of resources, and is easy to adapt. Both GURPS and HERO are a little too heavy
and have some genre blind spots. That probably means Savage Worlds, True20, Basic Role-Playing, HeroQuest, FATE, or our
homebrew Action Cards. GUMSHOE and
World of Darkness, while interesting don’t have all the necessary resources. Ideally
I’d like to have some of the mental aspects of characters carry across levels.

Reality: The portals have to be real in some way: alternate
timelines, fragment realities, metaphors for some cosmic struggle, or simply
other worlds. What happens there has to have weight and implications back. I’d
love to figure out a mechanic for scars and injuries in the portals which has
them carry on back up to the Alpha level.

Limited Portals: We don’t have an infinite # of portals. There’s
the real world, the Hub, plus one portal per player. In fact, each player
should get to pick the theme/setting for one portal. That’s their key place and
connection. Depending on the time and structure of things, perhaps we could
even do a Microscope session before entering into some (or all of the portals).
We could have a drafting session at the campaign start, allowing each player to
pick one (from a list of ideas I’d create).

Rotation: Each portal gets a fairly strict number of sessions-
a single arc with a key story and perhaps some interaction time. We don’t go
back to a portal until we’ve done all of the other ones.

Linked Thematic: There should be a recurring motif, theme, or
set of images across the different portals (science gone wrong, the perils of
power, hidden secrets come back to haunt, revenge, etc) which also serves as a
connection.

One Place: All of the Alpha characters need to be in geographic
proximity. The same country or city.

Markers: Other “players” within the OCI should eventually be
identifiable. Perhaps all of their characters with portals share the same mark
or tattoo (hidden?).

FINAL THOUGHTS

I have to admit that good deal of the appeal of OCI lies in
the diversity of campaigns it contains. I have more ideas for campaigns and
frames than I’ll ever get to run in full. This approach allows me to play with
some of those ideas, perhaps those that wouldn’t necessarily work over the long
term. Granted you could run these games sequentially, but you would lose the
extended stakes that yoking them together offers.

The key realization I’ve had is that this campaign framework
has worked before- and fairly successfully in two distinct campaigns. I’ve also
had players request it. So I know it can be done and I know it works- I just
have to figure out ways to improve it. It may not work for everyone, and tuning
it to the particular group will be essential. I think the payoff’s worth it, if
I can take it to a new level.